Friday, 28 March 2014

When you
embark on a process of change
(that is, in any learning process) you’re
taking a step into the unknown. You entering new territory, where there’s
no trodden path to follow.

The problem
here is that, quite often, this is scary. Where do I start? Which way do I go? What’s the shortest path to my
goal? And the safest? What monsters and dragons will I find down this road?

Although you may have a compass & map to navigate, it is never the same as
actually knowing the territory. And
sometimes, the mere fact of being alone in that vast and desolate place can
discourage you from taking the next step… so you turn round and return to where
you came from; only to live eternally with the question “Who would I be today
if I had taken the leap of faith and walked the path of change?”

Do not despair. You are always on time to take up
the road again and start walking. What
you need is a guide; someone who already knows the place and can walk with you
a while and show you the main features of the territory and introduce you to
its inhabitants… Until you feel confident enough in the new place to blaze a
trail on your own, courageously fathoming the unknown.

So, the question now is: how do I choose a good guide?

Sometimes you don’t have much to choose from, for
you know only one inhabitant of this new place, and all you can do is accept
his guidance or walk alone (and sometimes it’s better to walk alone).

Other times, there are so many available guides
that you don’t know which one to choose, nor which criteria to use to make your
choice. All offer something of interest and value. Which is the best fit for
you?

Choosing a
good guide can make all the difference when it comes to actually enjoying the
process of change. The best guide
for you might not necessarily be the most versed in the new territory, but the
one who knows how to adapt the best to changing circumstances in the new
territory, and can therefore show and model the process of adaptation that you
need to undergo.

Although it is imposible to be infalible when
making your choice, I venture to give you the 8 tips that I use to recognize a good guide. Use them as a
checklist for when you’re choosing a teacher, guru, leader, mentor,
facilitator, coach or therapist; that is, when choosing any person who’ll show
you how to start your journey through the new territory.

1)Around
him/her you feel safe. If you’re in any way worried about protecting or
defending yourself against the behavior of your guide you are in no place to
absorb new information: all your focus is directed towards survival. Feeling
safe is a direct result of your ability to self-regulate, and a good guide can
help you with that when he/she had developed that ability in themselves.

This is the MOST IMPORTANT point; all the following
tips are useless if this first point is not satisfied. Moreover, all following
tips are just different variables that allow you to feel safe around your
guide.

2) Knows
how to listen. A guide may
know the whole breadth, width and depth of the territory and every available
road within it, but if he/she can’t listen to what you’re asking, he/she might
lead you astray. Of course, it’s your responsibility to ask a clear question to get a clear answer. However, the best
guides are also able to help you clarify your question if you’re not even sure
what that is in the first place.

3)Knows a little
bit more than you about the territory. He/She does not need to be an expert
in the matter. Sometimes all he/she needs to be is a step ahead of you, so that
he/she may leave a footprint that shows you the next step on your journey.

4)Gives clear
explanations. It is important that your guide is able to explain to you the
next step in a way that you can understand and that captures your attention. We
all learn in different ways, and a good guide knows how to adapt his/her
explanation to suit yours.

5) You
share principles. Every guide
bases his/her work on certain key principles or fundamental beliefs about ‘how
things are’, which underlie his/her explanations and concrete methodology. If
you want to enjoy the journey he/she invites you on, it is important that you
resonate with his/her philosophy.

6) Walks
the talk. You want a guide that acts
and lives in coherence with what he/she teaches. A guide who only knows the
theory of the problem and solution is useless for all practical purposes. Only
a guide who walks the talk will be able to understand the obstacles your face
at each stage of the journey.

7) Takes
responsibility for his/her role.
This means that he/she is conscious of his role in your life and acts in
consequence, accepting the responsibilities that come with the role, and never
misusing the power that comes with it too. His/her idea of what this implies
will be based on his/her principles (see item 4).

8) Is
flexible and humble. As you advance
in your journey through the unknown, you’ll become confident enough to
elaborate your own ideas as to where you’d like to go and how you’d like to get
there. A flexible guide allows you to freely express your burgeoning curiosity
and supports you in your forays into the unknown. A humble guide knows when
your questions, interest, or needs go beyond his/her resources or would be
better satisfied by another guide. The best guide is he/she who will then bless
you and allow you to fly free to look for another guide, happy that his/her
mission in your life has been successfully completed.

Tu sum up, when you
choose your guide make sure that at his/her side you feel that you can unfold
your full potential, the whole span of your wings. We are all different and
different things make us feel safe; therefore there is no one guide who is the best
for all. The supreme guide is within you,
it’s that voice that tells you, “Follow this person for a while, he/she has the next piece of the puzzle to your journey.”

Nevertheless, a great guide can’t ensure your success.
If you don’t take the chance to walk a
bit on your own, at least in those stretches of road that you have already
walked with your guide, in order to habituate the new patterns, you’ll never be
truly free in the new territory. A guide is not meant to be a crutch for
life, he/she is meant to be a trampoline into it!

How is it
that we achieve this freedom in the new territory?

Next blog we’ll explore the 3 basic tools you need
to make the new territory your new home:

1. The role
of the guide (pushing the
limits of the unknown)

2. The role
of the practice group (practicing the
tools to successfully live within the new conquered territory)

3. The role
of your personal practice (securing
the conquered territory and giving birth to new questions that will take you
onto new discoveries)

Friday, 21 March 2014

Going from
your actual posture to your better posture is as simple as taking a step… but
that single step can be so monumental in its transformative powers that we
might be left standing with our foot dangling in the air, unsure if we want to
take the plunge at all.

¿What to do
then?

Today I’ll give you the solution.

What you
need are 4 basic things:

·attention

·a compass

·a map

·a guide.

Let’s look at each point separately.

ATTENTION

Living with
a new sense of posture (no matter how comfortable and elegant it is) is like
moving neighbourhoods. At first
you will be a little disoriented. If you’re not paying attention while you
drive your car from work to home, you’ll end up in your old neighbourhood. It’s
a habit, you’re just used to taking the old route without thinking.

This, believe it or not, is the hardest bit about
change. Rembering to pay attention. When I’m working with pupils on their
posture and movement, I remind them again and again before they move to: 1) stop (keep calm), 2) remember their general direction
(creating space for movement), 3)
release habitual tension in key areas (feet, around the sitting bones, armpits,
eyes, jaw). Only then can movement start in a new direction, because only then
are they able to pay attention to what is happening along the way.

A MAP

If you’ve
moved into a new neighbourhood, you’re going to need at least a minimal notion
of the layout of the place in order to move around confidently. A map allows you to know where the most important
places are, which buildings and other landmarks can act as markers for you to
orient yourself in space.

With regards to your posture, there are certain key
bony structures and other areas of your body that are worth to know and
recognize in yourself. They are your markers, and will give you an idea of
where your different bits are in relation to each other. They are also key
areas where tension tends to accumulate without us realizing. This unnecessary
tension greatly affects your chances of comfortably keeping your poise.

The key areas I teach my pupils to recognise are:

-the feet (your toes have their roots half-way down the
soles of your feet, you can release them from there, instead of thinking only
of the last two phalanges)

-the sitting
bones (those are meant to be sat
on, as opposed to your coxis which is meant to be free to wag like a dogs tail.
While you’re at it, release the space between your sitting bones)

-the armpits (which is in reality your shoulder joint, and it
needs space. Check this post where
I guide you through an exercise for releasing the area)

If you’re
in a new place, and you want to go from your house to the mall, you need to
know in which direction the mall is in the the first place. A compass allows
you to define a direction that relates one point with another on your map.

When it comes to your posture, what you need is to
learn to perceive not only where each key structure is, but, above all, what
space relationship there is between key structures. As you enhance your
perception of the spaces within your body, your sense of orientation within it
gets better: you start to recognize and perceive your true length and width and
depth.

A GUIDE

Imagine now
that you have moved to this new neighbourhood, but the map you were given is
written in a language you don’t recognize, and your compass (unbeknownst to
you) is not correctly calibrated. You’re
already all moved in and cozy in your new hood, but you have no idea how to
move around in the place. ¿What do you
do then?

You look
for a friendly neighbour, one who speaks your language and who can help you
navigate the new place.

A good guide fulfills some key functions:

·Helps you
recognise key features of the terrain so you can orient yourself better within
it.

·Can tell if your
compass is off, and can help you adjust it, and teach you to use it.

·Can give you
clear and concrete instructions to get from one point to another.

·If your
destination is imposible to explain in words, your guide can guide you
non-verbally towards it, perhaps even by walking with you the first few times.
He or she might do it several times, until you can build your own mental map of
the place, with your own references… Until one day you may find yourself giving
directions to some new lost-neighbour!

Same thing happens when you’re trying to change
your posture. It’s like your moving into a new definition of YOU. It’s not a
completely unknown place, it is still your body (you’ve moved neighbourhood,
not countries or planets), but you perceive it as different and strange enough
to have you disoriented for a while. What you need is the possibility of asking
someone who already inhabits that place to guide you through the basics.

All in all, if you feel like a change of postural habits
is long due, and you don’t mind the added benefits of elegance and freedom of
movement, you’re going to need to change some ideas, learn new things about you,
and have a lot of patience with yourself, because adaptation can take some
time.

Good news is you don’t need to go through this
transition alone. The road is a lot more enjoyable if you have good (and
knowledgeable) company. There’s people who have already travelled the road you’re
only starting, and they have great insights to share with you that will get you
to your destination quicker and safer.

Next blog,
I’ll give you the tips to recognise these ideal neighbour-guides, so you can
befriend one… because there’s
no need to know on the door of the block’s resident grouch, and have his
massive vicious dog come after you.

Friday, 14 March 2014

Bad
Posture is one
of those silent evils, like
cholesterol or bad breath: you don’t really notice it until it becomes a
serious problem (an unsightly hump, a herniated disc, a tension headache, a
bout of back pain that leaves you out of business for several days).

Perhaps
you only remember your bad posture
when you catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror, when your back aches after a
long day at work or minding the children, or when a friend, spouse, mother (or
tactless acquaintance) tells you, “Oh darling! You really must do something
about that posture of yours. If not, you’re going to end up humped like a camel!”

Then, and
only then (and only for a short while I might add), you actually do something
to mask the problem: You tighten your
back muscles to pull yourself up straight (this lasts you until it you can’t
stand the strain any longer… which is not long); You go shopping to get
yourself the latest ergonomic chair and gadget on the market (which seems to
help, but you soon figure out how to “get comfortably slouchy” in it too); You
Google the phrase “quick posture exercises” (which you practice, at most, once
or twice and then drop because they make you achy).

The thing
is that deep down inside you know
that posture is not something you can fix with band-aid. You need to take the
matter a whole lot more seriously… and that’s what’s stopping you from actually
doing anything about it: “Oh dang it! I
really must actually change something, mustn’t I?”

Here’s
some good news for you: Changing your posture
is actually simple and extremely pleasurable.

It’s
simple because the fundamental change occurs in an instant: suddenly, as you
release the habitual muscle tensión patterns that were keeping you down, you go
up, expand, grow… and you do it with no back-pain! It feels strange, pleasurably
strange.

Here’s
some bad news I’m afraid: Keeping the
change going isn’t easy.

Learning t
olive from that new place takes time: you need to grow into that new way of
being and feeling… And pleasurable as it may be, the truth it you have no clue
how to act from this new
self-identity. You might even fear that people will look at you strangely and
say, “You look different. What’s going on? Are you still you or are you
involved in something strange?”

Why is this so?

The answer may well be in the word “posture”
itself.

The word posture describes not only a physical
form. We also use the word posture in
expressions like, “The woman refused to change her posture on the matter.”

In this
case the word posture does not relate
to the woman’s straight or hunched back; it relates to her point of view or attitude.
Interestingly enough, your point of view is rooted in where (and how) you stand
(both literally and metaphorically). [If you’re interested in the subject of
posture and mindset you might want to check out this entry, or this one for more on the subject of words and their interpretations].

Therefore,
when we talk about “changing our posture”, we’re not only talking about changing our
physical appearance. What we’re also delving into the delicate area of changing how we face Life.

In
February of this year I gave a series of workshops on posture to a varied group
of people. In the short space of an hour and half, all participants could walk
the path that lead them from their habitual posture to a more upright and
elegant state of poise, that required no excessive muscular effort to hold.

However, the ability to hold that change in time
requires an inner shift: a shift in the way you think about your posture. And that’s the tough bit about change… sustaining,
until it becomes naturalized, a new way
of thinking.

Change requires energy, and that can tire you. [Check
out this entry for an
exploration on the subject of change
fatigue].

Change requires you to live for a while in a state
of uncertain equilibrium, and that is scary. We all have our habitual
equilibrium states (however efficient or inefficient energy-wise they may be),
and change challenges that delicate equilibrium. When undergoing a bout of
change, we must live for a while without knowing all the rules, without having
all the answers. The situation gets better with time, but at the beginning you’re
a beginner, you don’t know, and that might feel like an uncomfortably
vulnerable place to inhabit. [If you’re interested, in this entry and this one I tell you about my own experiences in this area].

Change requires you to learn to live from the new
place in different situations. Perhaps you can hold your new perspective on life
while you’re leisurely taking a stroll down the beach, having a nice cup of
tea, or during your relaxing yoga class… But… What about those moments when
everything goes bezerk at work? And when you’re having an argument with your
spouse, your kids or a friend? Or when you’re about to face an important interview,
meeting or conference room? And standing around in 4-inch heels at a party with
no visible chair in sight? [My most basic advice for these cases is still what
I mention here, but I’ll look
into each one of these situations in future blogs].

It’s
frustrating, I know. Going from your
actual posture to your better posture is as simple as taking a step… but it’s a
step into the unknown. That single step can be so monumental in its
transformative powers that we might be left standing with our foot dangling in
the air, unsure if we want to take the plunge at all. We have to tool and the
directions for change, but we hesitate to start walking the path. We can’t go
back to acting like we don’t know how
to change our problem… but we’re afraid to fail at the change. In that space
that’s neither here nor there, doubts come quickly calling: “And what if I look
strange? What if I’m criticized by my loved ones? What if I do it all wrong and
hurt myself? What if I don’t like what or who I turn into? What if I try and fail?”

What to do then? What compass will orient you in this new territory?

This blog
is already long enough. Let’s tackle the answers to these questions next time.
See you soon!

Saturday, 1 March 2014

The
academic (school) year begins, and in Uruguay that
means the year sort of finally begins for everyone… (and it finishes “beginning”
after Holy Week... don't ask... it's complicated).

What
does that mean for many people (she-who-writes included)?

Stress… stretched across several weeks.

What
specific form of stress?

Scheduling-stress.

Why
does scheduling produce stress?

Decisions, too many
decisions, and not all depending solely on your preferences or your times.

If you have kids you know what I mean: juggling your
schedule around your kids’ school and extracurricular activities, so that
everyone (and that includes you) is where they have to be on time.

Do
I have a solution that will remove all stress from this time of the year?

Unfortunately,
no. I’m afraid that, at least for the time being, I’ll have to accept it as
part of Life.

Every
beginning, (be it of the year, of a new project, of a new home,
of a new member in the family… or whatever) will put stress on your system.

Why?

Because we don’t yet have routines (i.e. habits) around it. It’s a new stimulus
that’s challenging our status-quo, our current equilibrium point. All our
previously carefully planned systems and routines are put on their heads,
everything is up for grabs, and whatever wasn’t seriously rooted in our being,
will be gone with the winds of change.

At
those times, we’ll bank heavily on our deeper, more ingrained, habits…
those we don’t have to think about at all because they’re firmly rooted in our
self-definition. If you’re a smoker, you’ll smoke more, if you’re a worrier,
you’ll worry more, if you’re a binge-eater, you’ll binge more.

Why?

Once
again, decision fatigue.While trying to deal with the stress-factor, all our
mental energy is used up, and there’s no self-regulatory power left for other
areas. You’re too tired to cook a healthy meal (unless eating healthy is so
ingrained in you that you can’t imagine not doing it) so you end up eating out,
or calling for a pizza. You’re too tired to keep up your exercise routine
(unless exercising is something you can’t imagine living without), so you fall
off the bandwagon. Get the picture?

What
to do about it?

To begin with, don’t try to change too many things at once. Choose only 2… and
deal with each according to its characteristics.

There’s already one area that needs your attention, is
the highest stress inducing stimuli, and dealing with it depends solely on you
(i.e. nobody else can arrange your schedule for you). That change-inducing
stimulus comes from outside of you, from your context. The amount of stress it
generates will depend on your personality and the characteristics of your own
particular context (i.e. how many balls you’re juggling at one single time).

These types of changes are the urgent (but not always
or necessarily important) type. They spring up on you unawares, and there’s not
much you can do to anticipate their consequences. For example: arranging schedules at the beginning of the school year.

The
second area of change is that stressor which you have placed upon yourself, in
order to improve your conditions (your health, your
posture, your finances, your relationships, etc.).

These are the types of change
that are important, they produce long-term satisfaction. But since they don’t
always seem urgent (which doesn’t mean they’re not), they tend to get postponed
until the latest crisis is dealt with (by which time a new crisis may well have
popped up on the radar… such is life).

How
can you keep that second, life-bettering-change going when Life throws a curve
ball of scheduling-frenzy your way?

Get help that will enable you to create change-inducing
routines.

Help of this type comes in many guises, depending on
the type of change you’re dealing with: a group, a friend, a class, a
therapist, a teacher, a coach, a cook, a nanny (Get the picture?). The
important point is getting some of the decision-angst off your shoulders,
delegating some of the decisions onto someone else who is better prepared to
shoulder the hugest bulk of the burden… so that you can concentrate on the
essentials.

This is why we take lessons, join classes, go to gyms,
join meditation groups, enroll in courses, etc. What we want is the results and
the joy of doing something for our benefit… with only as much thinking and
decisions as we can currently handle, and so avoid being completely swallowed
up and paralysed by them.

For example, when you start taking lessons in some form
of dance, it’s already hard enough to grapple with the learning itself, with
being a complete beginner all over again. It’s plenty hard to know which foot
to place where, in what sequence, to get the timing, the rhythm, the feel, etc.
You don’t want to also be deciding which music to play, what step to learn
today that will build up on your previously learned step, how to find a
suitable venue and time for your learning period, etc.

Going to a teacher for lessons (be it an individual
lesson or a group lesson) takes away all that responsibility off your
un-prepared shoulders: your job is to be student and learn the dance (the
essential point)… the rest, your teacher can take care of, that’s what she’s
prepared to do.

Undergoing your change-effort in good company helps you
remain motivated throughout the process (despite the scheduling-frenzy or other
external stressors).

It puts order in your life by creating a routine that
you can follow (e.g. lessons are Mondays at 2pm. Period), which takes a away
many energy-swallowing decisions you’d otherwise need to be making. This means you have energy for the actual change. It also helps you create a habit of
change: it puts the steps in order, it gives you the time and space to practice,
it challenges you to take yourself to the next level of achievement.

So
what are you waiting for?

Life won’t stop sending you curve
balls. Perhaps, what you need to learn is how to bat them without even
flinching, with grace, elegance, and a smile.